Packin' On Pound$ (updated)

U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is taking more heat for her fund-raising tactics, this time for doing an event overseas last month.

According to the Majorityap.com, a Republican-founded news and research service that focuses on investigating Democrats, Gillibrand held a fund-raiser on April 4 at the Covent Garden Hotel, where rooms rent from about $418 to $745 a night.

The event was hosted by the United Kingdom Chapter of Democrats Abroad, an expatriate group that has clubs around England. Here’s the event page, or go to this saved version if the page expires. The page lists the admission fee as “10 pounds, 5 pounds concession,â€ which works out to about $30. But Gillibrand spokeswoman Rachel McEneny said that was for Gillibrand’s appearance as guest speaker; the actual fund-raising was done separately and organized by three friends of Gillibrand’s. Donations, sheÂ said, ran around $150 to $200 and totaled between $5,000 andÂ $6,000.

It would be illegal for Gillibrand’s campaign to bank any funds donated byÂ non-U.S. citizens, but McEneny said guests had to show a U.S. passport. “No illegal money was raised,” McEneny said.

Gillibrand had another fund-raiser planned April 5 at the Reform ClubÂ (once the headquarters of the Liberal Party but now just a social club), but it was cancelled, McEneny said.

MajorityAP, short for Majority Accountability Project, chided Gillibrand for raising money abroad instead of working, noting that one of Gillibrand’s early attacks on former Republican U.S. Rep. John Sweeney was for out-of-state fund-raising while he was pushing reform in Washington, D.C. (an early salvo was over a $2,000-a-head ski weekend fund-raiser in Utah, that featured dinner at the home of a pharmaceutical lobbyist.)

Â McEneny, however, said Gillibrand’s fund-raisers occurred on a vacation trip to visit with Gillibrand’s husband Jonathan’s family.